Readers' Picks: Best Travel Songs of All Time

CNN ^ | Fri June 20, 2014 | Chuck Thompson

[Fresh Wind]

David Bromberg-New Lee Highway Blues

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHhwLHC2xYc

[Fresh Wind]

Sammy Hagar-I Can’t Drive 55

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvV3nn_de2k

[trebb]

Genesis - Fly on a Windshield

[Artie]

The Marshall Tucker Band - “24 Hours at a Time” - the live version with Charlie Daniels on fiddle. Outstanding. The lead guitarist was faster than the speed of sound.

[fatima]

:)We always sang On The Road Again with all the kids.We had a trailer up the mountains years ago and when we made the turn on a certain Route my husband would say where are we.The kids would all say”The Last Leg oF the Journey:((((Hugs))))

[left that other site]

LOL!

Actually, he was born and raised in Dorchester, MA, right down the street from me. LOL

[wildbill]

Most traveling songs are about the angst of the traveler who is either leaving loved ones or coming home. Here are some great ones I haven’t seen listed.

500 Hundred Miles—recorded by almost everyone in the music business.

Wikipedia List of Train songs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_train_songs

but my favorite may be “City of New Orleans”

How could you forget: “by the Time I get to Phoenix” or “Amarillo by Morning”

“Take me home Country Roads” & “leaving on a Jet Plane” by John Denver

[ken in texas]

Autobahn -- Kraftwerk.

[Fiji Hill]

How could you forget: “by the Time I get to Phoenix”

I've always been curious as to where the singer of this song began his trip to Oklahoma. Perhaps it was Sonoyta, Sonora. At the time the song was written, the roads connecting Sonoyta and Texhoma, the closest town in Oklahoma to Sonoyta, were mostly two-lane highways, so the singer would have had to step on the gas to make the 900 miles between the two communities in a day.

[wildbill]

I’ve always assumed that he left from California, specifically the LA area, to go back to Oklahoma. There was a historic connection between “Oakies” and California going back to the Depression Dust Bowl.

[Fiji Hill]

Today, a road trip from the Eastside Market Italian Deli on Alpine and Figueroa in LA to Texhoma or Boise City, Okla. would cover about 1150 miles one way and take about 20 hours. In 1967, it would have taken longer, since beyond Blythe, Calif., there would be mostly two-lane roads and stop-and-go traffic through the Phoenix area. So the driver would have had to get an early start to get there in a day, but he could probably still do it by loading up on coffee at places like Aguila, Ariz., Nara Visa, NM, and Dalhart, Texas.

Interestingly, the song's writer, Jimmie Webb, came from western Oklahoma, making him a CIO--a California-Improved Okie.